: 286 

.N6 
1856 
Copy 1 





THE 




CHILD 


AND 


THE MAN: 


OR, 

ANNIVERSARY 


SUGGESTIONS, 


DR. 


n. T. HALLOCK. 

1 




an ©ration 

1 


DELIVERED IN TTET 


7 YOllK. OH 


THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1850 ! 



TO WHICH ARE ADDED 

EXTFJIFOIJANEOUS SPEECHES, 

BY S. B. BrtlTTAN, WILLIAM II. BUDLEIGII, AND OTHERS, 

ox THE SAJIE OCCASION. 



WnEN I was a chiM, I ^j.akf as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child ; but 
when I became a Man, I jnit avay childish th'mga.—rdul. 



NEW YORK: 

ELLIN WOOD AND HILLS, REPORTERS AND PUBLISHERS, 

?,42 r,RO».DWAT. 

1 85(1. 



THE 



CHILD AND THE MAN: 

OR, 

ANNIVEllSARY SUGGESTIONS, 

BY 

DE. R. T. HALLOCK. 

^n ©ration 

DELIVERED IN NEW YOKE, ON THE EOURTH OF JULY, 1856. 

TO WHICH ARE ADDED 

EXTEMPORANEOUS SPEECHES, 

BY S. B. BRITTAN, WILLIAM H. BURLEIGH, AND OTHERS, 

ON THE SAJIE OCCASION. 



When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a chUd, I thought as a child ; but 
when I became a Man, I put away childish thirxgl-Pata. 



NEW YORK: 

ELLINWOOD AND HILLS, REPORTERS AND PUBLISHERS, 

342 BROADWAY. 
1856. 






Entered, according to Act of Confrress, in the year 1S5G, by 

ELLINWOOD AND HILLS, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District 
of New York. 



-2- ^' 



DAVII8 AND KOHEIITS, 8TERF.OTYPEE8, 

201 William Street, N. Y. 



PREFACE. 



The Oration and proceedings herein presented to the 
public, contrast strongly with those usual to Fourth-of-Julj 
celebrations. Gunpowder and bad rum, with any amount 
of fulsome commendation of departed heroes and buried 
virtues, are the usual concomitants of such occasions. To 
the candid and thinking man, who opens his eyes to the 
gigantic wrongs that are perpetrated in the name of the 
Constitution and of Liberty, the spectacle is one calculated 
to awaken painful emotions and gloomy apprehensions. 
To see a nation engage in an annual glorification of her 
illustrious dead, while in the history of all the intervening 
months her appointed rulers enter upon and execute a sys- 
tematized conspiracy against human liberty, and all the 
most sacred principles of the Revolution, is a gross incon- 
sistency and a painful exhibition of human passion. To 
glorify the illustrious dead in empty words, while we repu- 
diate and trample into the dust the very liberties they bled 
to establish, is not a work in which the philanthropist or 
the true patriot is willing to engage. How much better 
would it be, could we in our life, as a people, illustrate our 



If PREFACE. 

attachment for the principles of liberty, instead of profess- 
ing it with pompous words, while we repudiate it as a 
living fact. 

We congratulate ourselves upon being able to present to 
the American people the masterly Oration which mainly 
occupies these pages. It needs no commendation at our 
hands. It meets manfully the living issues of to-day, while 
as an intellectual effort it will rank among the very first 

productions of our time. 

THE PUBLISHERS. 



THE 



CHILD AND THE MAN. 



On Friday, July 4th, 1856, pursuant to cal^, an intelligent audience con- 
tened at the Brooks Assembly llooms, in the city of New York, to commemorate 
the Eightieth Anniversary of American Independence. 

Charles Partridge, Esq., proprietor of the Spiritual Telegraph, by 
request of the Committee of Arrangements, read the call for the meeting, and 
the Declaration of Independence ; after which Dr. R. T. IIallock delirered 
the following 

©ration: 

We are to speak of an epoch in human history. Man changes, 
and is both the cause and the subject of change or revokition, even 
as the globe he dwells upon has its periods of change, and its sea- 
sons of peace and of war. The earth has a revolutionary history, 
even as man has. Rich in material for thought, those grim old 
battle-fields where the elements met in deadly conflict, and left 
them thickly covered with the ripening constituents of human 
life, to the glorious end that human life might be. For this result 
was the strife, and the establishment of the new empire of man- 
hood over a new world was the victory. 

Mark well how nature warred for man before man was — how 
she trampled upon all apparent law and order for his sake— how in- 
stitution warred with institution and state with state, as in the human 
world to-day. The empire of water above, and the kingdom of fire 
below — is not the earth scarred all over with their conflicts — their 
alternate victories and defeats ? There was a " north" then, and 
a " south,^' and things which did not know that nor any other point 
of the compass, except the one which looked directly to themselves, 
just as with us to-day There was slavery then, and freedom 
fought it as now, and conquered it too, as it will now. Much that 
belongs to freedom and to us was in bondage then. In those days 



6 THE CmLD AND THE MAN. 

your Hudson River was a Lake, held " in durance vile ;" and if his 
memory be not impaired by age, might tell how impossible freedom 
looked to him in his childhood. A chain of deductions, stronger 
far than any which modern demagogues have forged from the rusty 
scraps of a dishonored constitution, bound him down, and his " un- 
derground railroad" was all in perspective. For how many ages 
did his pent-up energies beat in vain against his rock-ribbed prison, 
and his bosom heave and swell like a chained giant panting to be 
free ! But revolution came, and with it liberty. Its waters glide 
in freedom now, through the " patriarchal institution'' of Rock con- 
servatism, and it has converted the granite gateway of its ancient 
prison into an enduring monument of its everlasting freedom ! 

Your natural forces are all " Abolitionists," and work for liberty 
and " Free Soil.'''' The elements would seem to be all " Black 
Republicans.'''' In those days, as now, no sooner had the respecta- 
ble " Castle Garden" committee of that epoch got things fixed to 
its mind, and all the " Doughfaces" comfortable, and the " Hard 
Shell" dunderpates asleep, than the battle began. Every thing, 
however respectable, was turned upside down. They never stopped 
to " compromise" with constitutions, but broke them outright, and 
"dissolved the Union" with a celerity that would astonish Garrison 
himself, if that were possible. Your fire and your water force, your 
heat and your cold force, with a corps of imponderable " invincibles'' 
by way of pioneers, what levclers are they ! and their blows are all 
dealt lor iVeedom. They never move a muscle but the world is better, 
freer, happier. Let old Conservatism build as strongly as he may, 
they will rebuild. He may lock up the rivers, they will set them free ; 
pile up the mountains, they will break them in pieces and scatter their 
treasures as if inspired with the prophecy that they would be needed. 

Nature wages eternal and universal war with Conservatism. The 
moment an epoch gets " easy in its mind" and begins to take a 
" south- side''' view of things, preparatory to a comfortable nap of a 
million of years or so, she calls a " council of war. ''^ Inflammatory 
speeches are made ; time-honored institutions are denounced ; sa- 
cred things are profaned ; established usages held in contempt. 
Finally, she suggests that General Earthquake take the command 
in chief, and the result is — Revolution. 

Revolution, then, must be held as decidedly respectable, if it can 
be considered respectable to be natural. Man is born of revolu- 
tionary parents, and his ancestry dates far beyond " 76." What 



THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 7 

wonder the instinct of change, of revolution, should be a deathless 
attribute of man, seeing he was born of it, and imbibed it from the 
breast of his mother, and was by her consecrated and sworn, like 
the Carthaginian of old, to eternal enmity with inertia. 

The true man is ever the changing man. The power to grow 
implies the capacity to change, to revolutionize all within him and 
without him. 

There is a stupid old god, worshiped by all the comfortable in 
every age, and in our own times in particular, whose requirements 
are of easy comprehension, and whose one commandment is, " Let 
things alone /" A most select and respectable class of worshipers 
these comfortables, and their " yoke is easy," and " their burthen 
light." " Never do any thing, and let what is done alone" is the 
simple test of honorable fellowship. Whatever political rule they 
are born under, or institution they are received into, must be " let 
alone,'' that they may be comfortable. " Touch not the Lord's 
anointed," is their motto, meaning themselves always ; and they 
set up the idol of this sublime theology on a globe whose every acre 
is a revolutionary battle-field and burial-ground, where Nature's 
grand army of Radicals had entombed in fossil, beyond the galvanic 
power of Gabriel's trump, the organic remains of a world that was, 
as if Nature, having abolished mastodons and monsters without 
mercy, would let such a thing live ! 

Nature, probably because she finds it difficult or mconvenient to 
change her " natural heart,'' has never been " a member in good 
standing" with that Church, but on the contrary has invariably de- 
nied their creed and denounced their worship. She will not let 
things alone herself, nor permit her children to do so. She has an 
object to accomplish — a manhood to produce, a family of children 
to grow into free and noble-hearted men. Above all thin"-s, she 
loves her children, and v:orks for them daily, and will have them 
work too. 

Popular religions, as well as other institutions, are necessarily 
defective, not to say false, and become obsolete even before they 
can become popular, because they are the mere clothes which 
man makes for present use or convenience, and which he is con- 
stantly outgrowing and wearing out. They never can become a 
fixity ; at best, they can express correctly but a passing moment in 
the eternal progress of a living man. The new wine must have 
its new bottles ; the new man, his new clothes. Only the dwarfed 



8 THE CmLD AND THE MAN. 

man can wear the cast-oiT garments of a former childhood, with 
any degree of comfort. 

Change, therefore, is a necessity of man's nature, and a law of his 
beiiitif ; and Revolution as a means of change becomes a sacred 
instrument in his hands. When he ceases to exercise that power 
over himself, he becomes a slave, and loses one of the attributes of 
manhood. While he is worshiping at the altar of a church and 
state which require him to let things alone, the three are on the 
high road to destruction. Nature, with her array of revolutionary 
forces, is stronger than they, and she will not let things alone — 
especially such things. Do but consider ! A well-grown man, to 
all outward seeming, insists on appearing in the streets of the 19th 
century in the habiliments of his childhood, and that we also, to 
be respectable, must wear the same garments. Is he to be let 
alone — can he be let alone with safety even to himself? If you 
fail to transform him into a gentlemen, he will assuredly degenerate 
into a savage. 

The childhood trappings of kingcraft and priestcraft, already 
worn to tatters — -are we to be pleased with them forever ? Why, 
the great thing for which all Boobydom burns powder and gets 
drunk to-day, was the founding a state icithoitt a king, and a church 
without a priest. 

The system of slavery which man adopted when a mere boy, 
though dignified by the title of " Patriarchal institution" — is no rust 
to corrode its chains ? Is that to be let alone, when the institution 
of patriarchs themselves is abolished of God and man ? Will 
Paul's letter to Philemon, read, as it usually is, upside down, so 
paralyze the life within, and so prevent the chafing of angry elements 
without, as to preserve its innate deformity and meanness in per- 
petual youth, when even mumtnies rot ? The thing is not pos- 
sible. 

Fulfill every threat which despotism has made — call the roll of 
your slaves in the capital of every State in the Union — make a 
slave-pen of your seat of Government, and a plantation of every 
Revolutionary battle-field ; enlist in its service all the priests of 
your religions, and all the statesmen of your parties ; and yet it 
can not stand — Nature having bidden it to go. It has had a more 
than twenty-one-years lease of your American Senate, and your 
American Church. Incense has been burned freely in honor of it. 
The best timber the market affords has been freely bought up to 



THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 9 

brace and sustain it. Churchmen and statesmen have been alike 
sacrificed at its altar, and have done servile duty for its sake. The 
Bible and the sword have been enlisted in its behalf ; and yet, with 
all its bloated rotundity of figure and flourish of whip, it never was 
so imbecile, it never looked and felt so mean, an it does to-day be- 
neath this July sun ! 

You can not keep vitality in a carcass which Nature has pro- 
nounced fit only to rot ; nor can it be expected that living men will 
long carry it about on their shoulders with honorable mention. 

It has been intimated that this strange institution to stand by the 
side of Liberty, came from the childhood of the race. Its root is 
the natural guardianship of strength over weakness, but its branches, 
through the perverted culture of children, bear the fruit of oppres- 
sion ; and it may be said in passing, that its evil is, that it prevents 
the possibility of manhood to the utmost of its influence. 

When we look carefully, as v/e should, at this matter of child- 
hood (and it has its type in the nursery, by which we may know 
it), we shall see it covers the whole field of evil, and this fruitful 
section of it in particular. Children are cruel from ignorance. 
They have no regard for the frogs, only for the pleasure of pelting 
them. You see them trample upon the life of a defenseless kitten 
because they can not realize that it has the power to feel. BuN 
the child outgrows that as manhood advances and its mind expands 
Injustice and cruelty are not the natural attributes of a grown hu 
manity ; a whip is not the symbol of true manhood. 

The religious institutions which man made for himself when a 
child, must, like the clothes of that interesting period, and the 
amusements of children, all be laid aside by the man. The indi- 
vidual who can find room enough for his limbs in the garments 
that fitted him forty years ago, has not grown any in all that time. 
And this is precisely the state of the popular church. It wears 
the same clothes, and amuses itself with the same routine as at the 
beginning. But Nature will not have it so ; she bids man grow ; 
and, by consequence, to remove all obstacles out of the way of his 
growth. Nature throws open her great storehouse of facts and 
principles. Heaven lets down to him a ladder of inspiration by 
which he may have access to the very fountain of Divine love and 
wisdom, to the end that he may become a man. What then is to 
be the end of a church which insists on remaining a child ? Na- 
ture has but one alternative for all her forms of life — grow or rot. 



10 THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 

Another characteristic of infancy which we see clearly exem- 
plified in our religious and political institutions is, its desire to 
rule. But Nature will not have it rule. The end of such rule is 
ruin ; which she can not afford. Your king and your priest, when 
they are men, and do the work of men, she will own them, and bless 
their work ; for she honors manhood everywhere. She indorsed 
Mohammed, though in nursery phrase an " impostor ;" but for that 
sanctified ass, who, at Constantinople, to-day, does but mumble 
and gesticulate the inevitable crudities of the man, she has no word 
of commendation, and can by no means bless. When Pope Greg- 
ory sent his monks into Britain, she went with them. But for that 
other quadruped that browses upon the thistles which grow above 
the ruins of a fallen manhood, and the monuments of a mighty em- 
pire, whose bray is heard from the Vatican, and always the loud- 
est when there is nothing to be said ; who, when the people ask 
for absolution from oppression and misrule, does, by way of answer, 
call in all the kindred ears from the common to hear, and help him 
indorse the moral character of a young Jewess by the name of 
Mary, who died some two thousand years before he was born, and 
whose morality in the mean time was never seriously called in 
question — for such a " representative of St. Peter"" she has a rather 
ominous look in these days — some such look as might be expressed 
by our own faces d'd we in the hour of need see the form of a 
friend before us, and on testing his identity find him straw ! Na- 
ture will indorse a true man, whether right or wrong in theory. 
But to call an edifice of bricks and mortar, with a congregation in 
it, whose sole business is to laud and praise the lives and deeds of 
other men, a Church, is mere child's play, and bears less resem- 
blance to the reality than a hobby-horse does to the living animal 
he bestrides in after years. 

Nature, having it in her mind to rear men, obviously can not 
adopt childhood as a final conclusion. Therefore, when a man 
sets up the determination that matters of church or state shall 
remain precisely as they are, he does virtually resolve not to grow 
any more ; and we know the alternative. Even Sinai failed to 
produce institutions which were to last forever ; the good that was 
must give place to the better which was forthcoming. The Jewish 
people taking it into their wise heads not to f^ow any more (think- 
ing their old clothes good enough), mounted guard over them, with 
a fervent zeal that was not effectual. When they took that resolve, 



"^ 



THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 11 

we know that notwithstanding the heaven-descended glory of their 
antecedents, they also look the alternative, and went to pieces as 
a nation, just like less favored people. 

Now, childhood, which, be it remembered, never seems to itself 
to be such — childhood in the high places of church and state — child- 
hood that does not mean to grow any moi-e, is ever the opposing 
obstacle to natural change or growth, and the immediate cause of 
revolution. If the chicken will not break the shell for itself, it 
must be broken for it, or we can have no poultry. This fact has 
colored the whole stream of human history with blood, and made 
revolution inevitable. 

The particular revolution which is the theme of popular eulogy 
to-day, is one of a natural series. To laud its deeds of daring 
and of self-sacrifice is not our present purpose. We will consider 
all that as done. We have no ink to shed into that popular sea of 
enthusiasm, mingled with rum, whose surges rise higher and be- 
come more boisterous to-day, in proportion to the decline of reason 
and the sun. It is in the light of an important member of a grand 
revolutionary family that we should see it if we would understand 
its true significance. The young Liberty, born in 1776, had a sister 
older than himself, who nursed him, and a mother who bore him, 
or he could never have seen a birthday ; nor his modern friends 
have gotten drunk in honor of it. Like the mother of Moses, who 
hid her mystic babe in the bulrushes of the Nile, she prepared a 
couch for the young Liberty by the sea-side of a wilderness. She 
spread its " cradle" in the shadow of " Plymouth Rock," and 
waited " all the days of her appointed time" for the birth of the new 
child. 

And the mother of that babe is yet fruitful. Into the lap of all 
the ages she places a child to nurse and makes them responsible 
for their bringing up. That the one for which we are held respon- 
sible grew while men had it in charge, is certain. That it is a 
*' spoiled child" now, is equally certain ; for it has long been left 
to the guidance of babes and boobies. No man can enter the 
nursery now to give it wholesome counsel, but on peril of his life. 
They have let him live in unholy intimacy with slavery so long, 
that now he insists on marrying her, with a privilege of bestowing 
upon her, by way of pin money, all the land and all the people he 
can lay his hands on. 

Herein we see the old difficulty, the old cause, and the new ne- 



12 THE CHILD AND THE MAN 

cessity for another revolutionary birth. The child of " 7G" will 
never be saved except he be " born again" and have in future the 
society and counsel of men. The children have spoiled him. The 
nursery is in rebellion against the parlor and the kitchen, and as- 
sorts its right to rule the whole house, by virtue of its niu.sculai' 
power to use a whip ! Such rule leads inevitably to revolution, 
and therefore it concerns ns to study well the true indices of child" 
hood, that we may know it wherever it appears. 

In the British Parliament, when the chastisement of what they 
called *' American rebellion," and we call the " rights of man," was 
under consideration, the men in that body said : " My Lords, you 
can not conquer America !" The children said : " We can." And 
straightway, they did not. 

Now, the childhood and the manhood we are considering pertain 
to mentality, and not to muscle ; to state, and not to time. Ther 
manhood we speak of is not to be guaged by inches, but is that 
whose " gray hairs" are flowing " wisdoms," and whose " nge" is a 
useful life. Childhood is its opposite. But, as we have seen, thia 
spiritual youth and age have their types in the external. Thus, the 
first manifestation of physical childhcfod is that of eiftire selfishness. 
The infant demands all things, without thought of return or com* 
pensation. The some is true of spiritual childhood, and is one of 
its unerring indications. Maidiood is its opposite. 

These two states once walked side by side in the streets of the 
old Jerusalem, in the persons of Jesus, " the Christ," and Judas, 
" the traitor." We have no difficulty in distinguishing the man 
here, though their external stature may have been the same to an 
inch. George Washington and Benedict Arnold, though with 
characteristics less sharply defined, are instances to the same point. 
History holds these examples in her lap with thousands of others 
for the inspection of wisdom. They are the milestones along her 
dusty pathway and bloody morasses by which we may mark our 
progress and measure our growth. Supreme selfishness being the 
zero of mentality, we have a thermometer that can not lie by v/hich. 
to measure ourselves and others. The maximum and minimum of 
manhood are before us ; by as much as an individual, a church, oi 
a state are selfish in their ends and aims, by so much are they short 
of manhood. To attain it, they must leave not only their worn-out 
clothes, but all their selfishness, behind. 

Nature permits not any thing to live for itself, except during tho 



THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 13 

period of its infancy. The full-grown sheep gives man a new coat 
every year. The manhood state of a tree is marked by the profu- 
sion of its ripened fruit, which it shares alike with bird, and beast, 
and man. She points with her every finger to generosity as the 
true exponent of manhood, and through it to God, " who giveth all 
things." 

Allied to this supreme love of self is the desire for arbitrary rule 
over others. The only state over which, by permission of Nature, 
rule is admissible (and by authority of Scripture the rod is only for 
the child), aspires to wield it for its own selfish gratification as 
against all opposition— to transfer that which belongs appropriately 
to its own back to its puny right hand as a symbol of power. To- 
day, perchance, he roars for it with his own mouth, and, to-morrow, 
with the cannon's mouth ; but it is a child's voice in either case, 
and expressive of a child's love. The voice of manhood, whether 
from lungs or cannon, is ever against arbitrary power — never for it 
by any possibility. Search well the record of human experience, 
and on all its pages this fact will be found — childhood for power, 
manhood against it. 

To go no farther back in history than our own national birth-day, 
we see what a mere child was George the Third. The newspa- 
pers of our times speak of his determination to subdue the Ameri- 
can Colonies as his pet weakness. His brother kings of that era 
were also mostly fools, some of them actually idiotic. Not only 
was this kmg a simpleton, but in all the House of Lords there 
was not a man, that is, a man who could be heard. Childhood 
ruled the nation — grasping, petted, rapacious, irresponsible child- 
hood, that never grew an inch, and never came to its senses until 
the rod was wrenched from its hand and applied to its back, as was 
right and proper. Some of the best English thinkers declare the 
nation to-day to be all but strangled with " red tape," like a great 
booby entangled with its own " garters." 

Government, as sanctioned by Nature, is because of childhood, 
and presupposes it. There can be no government as of man over 
man among men. The man "is a law unto himself." Natural 
government, then, is that of man over child. Manhood is a state, 
of which every individual is a Peer. The government of child- 
hood is, therefore, pre-eminently unnatural, and must lead to disas- 
ter. That church and state wherein it rules are doomed. They 
stand opposed to Nature. She indicates her own officials — only 



14 THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 

\he candidates whom she prepares to rule can rule ; all others are 
pretenders. 

In the church and the state (for they must be considered together) 
it needs a somewhat practiced eye and careful look to detect the 
child, particularly in the Church, where it is the most mischievous. 
They seem so serious, and are so sincere at their play, that for a 
moment one might mistake it for work. Then, the tailor craft, and 
the way they wear their linen, is apt to deceive. But a boy is not 
a man though he wear his shirt on the outside of his coat instead 
of the inside, and call himself a bishop. 

Topple down rudely the cob-house of a child, and you see at 
once by his sobs and tears of what grave import to him is all that 
which you esteem so lightly. But you are not deceived at all by 
this as to the real value of the work, or the mental development of 
the workman. Be not, then, though the play be changed. 

You may see an exact counterpart of the nursery in the Church. 
For cob-house building, we have creed-making. The little people 
erect a paper fortress to keep the devil (who answers to the hob- 
goblin of the nursery) out, and themselves in. They most solemnly 
declare never to live in any other house but that forever. By-and- 
by it is blown down, and the whole nursery is in mourning. 

Again. You shall see them taking little crumbs of bread and 
sips of wine, with faces quite as earnest, and far more serious, than 
those other children, with their diminutive tea-set and table, when, 
by ma's permission, on some high holiday, they receive their little 
friends in state. Then you may see them in the great public play- 
house, which they will persist in calling a church, with gilded 
books in their hands, all bright and shining like a Christmas toy, 
intent upon the morning " lesson" which has been carefully pre- 
pared for them, with the sage consideration that they are not yet 
out of the nursery, and never will be ; while another boy stands on 
a raised platform to conduct the " exercises." And thus they play 
at religion. It has been gravely proposed of late years to greatly 
improve these " exercises" by what is called intoning the service, 
that is to say, by pronouncing the worn-out jargon with a holy 
snuffle. But let us respect their seriousness, while we do not al- 
low ourselves to be deceived by it. It will do for them, perhaps, 
but not for well-grown men. 

But for them to insist, as they always have, on men's receiving 
this child's play for gospel is incendiary in the extreme, and sure 



THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 15 

to light a fire that will do mischief. Where is the safety when 
children get to playing with fire ? In their mad pranks they have, 
as we know very well, burned from oft' the earth some of the noblest 
men that ever appeared on it ; and, like their prototypes of the nur- 
sery, crying over the self-demolition of their broken toys, have 
piously gathered up, and do now worship, not the divine spirit 
which was manifest in these men, but their " ashes." How all child- 
hood delights in dirt ! 

Among the drollest toys that Yankee ingenuity has constructed 
for babies to play at religion with, was the '• New England Primer." 
But Jonathan was a boy himself then, and worked after a pattern. 
He looks askance upon it now, somewhat, with a grin and a blush 
intermingled, as he asks himself whether the same "jack-knife" 
could "whittle out such strange contrasts as his cotton-mills and 
that? 

But Jonathan was an honest boy in those days, and willing to 
grow, and that saved him. If he can manage now to truck off, 
even at the pecuniary loss of " Deacon Giles' Distillery," the shams 
of this day for the sincerity of that, he will be safe yet, and not 
otherwise. 

His woodcuts, setting forth how, 

" In Adam's fall, 
We sinned all," 

though but lame specimens of art, had an air of honesty about 
them which put his " wood nutmeg" to the blush, though vastly more 
" artistic." His attempt to blend theological dogmas with alpha- 
betical doggerel, by way of mixing hell-fire with molasses, is ludi- 
crous enough in all conscience, but far less humiliating and mis- 
chievous than his subsequent dilution of it with " apple-jack." He 
has far greater cause to blush for his " New England Rum" than 
for his " New England Primer" — for his " speculations in cotton" 
than for his speculations in theology. 

It is noteworthy that, in this childhood of other days, there were 
types of the true man, and they were all revolutionists — Martin- 
Luther, George Fox. Mistake him not, this latter, in his suite of 
leather. He was a man, and stood high above the dynasty of child- 
hood that encompassed him on every hand. A true democrat was 
he, declaring loudly above the din and turmoil of the nursery, thai 
God did not dwell in bibles, nor in creeds, nor yet in curiously- 
carved cathedrals, but in the immortal spirit of man, who, in his 



16 THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 

own person, must be taught of the spirit, by the spirit, or he could 
never reach the stature of a man at all. That Christianity was a 
life, and not a creed ; that the light for man's guidance was within 
his soul, and not in a book, and never can be. 

Could that man have been understood by the Church, all its natu- 
ral and necessary changes, as well as those of the state, could have 
been efFected without revolution. A man who sees by the light of 
heaven reflected in his own soul, can not go essentially out of the 
way ; but a man with a chart of the way in his pocket, may fall 
into a ditch in sheer absence of the necessary light to examine it. 
But, few were the ears that could hear that man, and the eyes that 
could see him ; and of such as did, the most soon grew dull and 
dim ; and so the misrule went on, and revolution repeated itself, and 
will, until man governs the child, instead of the child the man. 

What is to come, or what can come, from that theology which 
knows nothing of the soul of man and its needs, save what it mis- 
reads in books, but disaster — disaster to church and state ? And 
yet with this danger imminent, among the controlling forces of all our 
vaunted institutions, sacred or profane, there is not heard the voice 
of a man ! True, there are men in the land — there is manhood in 
your American Senate ; but where ? Why, prostrate on its floor, 
while childhood stands over it with a bloody whip ! 

Brooks, though greatly less than a man, is not a devil ; he is a 
child. There was not enough of reason in him to comprehend 
that he was dealing slavery and himself the far heavier blow. The 
ancients expressed this imbecility by saying, " Whom the gods 
meant to destroy, they first made mad." 

It is a bitter pill to swallow — the deeds of this year, mingled 
with the memories of this day. There will be a turning from it 
with disgust and loathing ; for, from the blood of the cross to this 
hour, no drop of deeper significance was ever pressed from human 
veins ; and history will shriek, and go into hysterics, and point at 
it with a finger of fire, and wonder (being mostly learned in the out- 
side of things) why it is that the first blood in all American revolu- 
tions comes from New England veins, and smells so strongly of the 
Puritans. 

But it is to be presumed rve will not go into hysteria ; our 
concern is with the boy rather than the man ; the man can take 
care of himself. Sumner never wrought so bravely for manhood 
as when he lay prostrate before the unreasoning anger of a child ! 



THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 17 

The truth which man has from God, can not be stricken down. 
When that form fell, the truth that animated it was more potent than 
before. That fall shook the land like an earthquake ! It " rent 
the vail of the temple," where the divine spirit of Liberty was 
supposed to utter her inspirations, and demonstrated to all eyes and 
ears in the nation, that, what it had mistaken for such was mere 
nursery babble and imbecility. 

This plantation specimen of humanity, Brooks, is well worth 
considering. Understanding him thoroughly, we master the whole 
problem which distracts the world to-day. The conclusion we 
come to as to what he is, determines exactly what we are. Our 
efTiciency or inefficiency as patriots or reformers is seen in the 
light which shows him to us. 

Examining his antecedents, we find directly back of him a pro- 
fession of democracy, and a practice of absolute despotism. Des- 
potism, religious as well as social, in the Church as well as 
on the plantation. There is no sect that is not despotic, either 
by direct disciplinary statute, or by practice and doctrine. Take 
the Methodist Episcopal Church, for example. Now, until men 
can gather " grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles," they will 
find it difficult to gather political liberty from the thistle of theolo 
gical despotism. 

The men who were the most thoroughly efficient and directly 
instrumental in the estabUshment of American liberty were infidela 
— not to God nor to man, but to Church dogmatism. Paine, Jef- 
ferson, Franklin, had declared their independence of church creed 
before they published that other declaration of independence from 
George the Third. Without the one we never should have had the 
other. 

A plant is simply an unfolded germ ; you can not sow despotism 
and reap liberty ; hence the Church will have to digest as it best 
can, the mortification of thanking God for that liberty which she 
has the privilege of enjoying, solely through infidelity to herself. 

Then, again, the democracy of Jefferson being but a pocket edi- 
tion, for mere state purposes, of the broader liberty proclaimed by 
that other democrat, Jesus, is subject to the same law, which is, 
that only he who does the work, or lives the life of a doctrine, can by 
any possibility understand it. What, then, can the Brooks type of 
mankind know of law or of gospel — of liberty or of religion ? Pray, 
what is Brooks, then ? 

2 



18 THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 

The most childish, and therefore the most mischievous partisan- 
ship extant, is that of " Saints and Sinners" The American 
Senate is not so divided, but into boys and babies, three or four 
men, perhaps, and an old woman. But the men can not be heard, 
and the old lady is afraid to speak, so, that verdant youth. Young 
America, has it all his own way. So young, in fact, is he, that 
while he burns his powder to-day in honor of Liberty, he has not 
the sense to blush for the mad violence with which he struck her 
down, and if he could, would banish her from the face of the earth 
forever ! Very appropriately does he get drunk and make a noise 
in honor of Liberty ; his mode of celebrating her birthday being 
the exact measure of his estimation of her value. 

Now, if we compare carefully the church and state powers, we 
shall find that they play directly into each others hands, and agree 
together like a voice and its echo. The one is governed by what 
is 7Wt in the Bible, and the other by what is not in the Constitu- 
tion ; each professing the while a profound reverence for both. In 
the name of democracy and the constitution, the one contends for the 
right of perpetual slavery for the serf, while the other, in the name of 
God and the Bible, declares for the everlasting damnation of the sin- 
ner. The one makes a slaveholder of Liberty, the other of God ! 
In the state, " leaving undone all that he ought to do," he calls 
Legislation. In the church he plumes himself on his piety by 
virtue of telling God every Sunday morning how well he has suc- 
ceeded in 7iot doing it. This he dignifies by the title of " wor- 
ship." When a monstrous wrong is to be done, the one quotes 
the " Constitution," and the other the " Word of God." The one 
finds no warrant in his sacred document for the promotion of lib- 
erty ; the other finds nothing in his against the extension and 
perpetuation of despotism. When interest demands it, there is no 
wrong that can not be proved clearly right by the Constitution, and 
no right that is not as certainly wrong by the Bible. In this 
way they strengthen each other, and perpetuate the reign of 
misrule. 

Such children do institutions make of men ; in them we see a 
reversal of the established order of nature, and a sure presage of 
their downfall. No institution can traverse a law of nature and 
live. From small to great, from infancy to manhood, not from 
great to small, and from little to less, is her method, which these 
church and state institutions are doing all they can to reverse. 



THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 19 

Under their superincumbent weight the man grows weak as they 
grow strong. A chicken running about with a shell upon its back 
can not grow — it must throw it off or die. 

The great Quaker idea of personal communion with the spiritual 
and the divine, as embodied in George Fox, clothed the man with 
its own divine power. But the Quaker inspiration was of God, 
and the Quaker institution is of man ; and now, where is the 
Quaker ? Look for him and you find a hat — that is all ! The 
institution having adhered to him like the shell to the back of the 
chicken, the Quaker is gone, and nothing but the shell remains 
to be seen. 

The decay of manhood is ever in the ratio of the growth of the 
institution he exalts above himself. Are we not obliged to break 
up the crust of the earth when we would have the seed-germs 
sprout ? It would be difficult for God himself to inspire a Quaker 
now ; he stands protected by his hat. Once, it was easy enough; 
when he wore it as a mere convenience, the light shone through 
it ; but as soon as he exalted it into an institution, it could resist the 
focal rays of the whole heaven. I have paid this compliment to 
the Quakers, because I was born one myself, and have taken them 
as an exponent of sectarian institutions, because no sect has stood 
80 high or fallen so low. 

The little life there is in what is called the Church \s ganglionic 
—it lives because it can not wholly die. 

Now the Church is to a nation what the heart is to a man — the 
seat of its indwelling life. Disease there affects the body politic, 
as certainly as that of the heart does the body corporate. Volition 
is from affection. The Church represents the love of a nation, and 
the State its wisdom. But the popular church is a child altogether. 
The creed -has crushed and cramped its limbs, so that when it 
would take a step in the right direction, it finds much difficulty. 
Great boobies occupy the places once filled by great men. They 
are the defenders of state rapacity and public injustice, where their 
fathers denounced it. For a state, cursed with the approbation 
and blessing of such a church, there is nothing left but to— go, 
and not stand too long, either, " on the order of its going." The 
freedom of the one is like the religion of the other— c/Z on paper. 
Under their mutual guardianship you may talk if you will of the 
liberty of the slaveholder, and of the inspiration of an apostle, but 
never of your own. To speak of liberty as a human prerogative. 



20 THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 

is " fanaticism." To speak of inspiration as a personal experience, 
is " infidelity." 

Thus the Church having dwindled into an institution of mere 
forms, the State, which stands related to it as the outside of a man 
does to his inside, shrunk into a mere party of slave-drivers. The 
soul that was once in it departed, and we have the body to bury, 
that it may not taint the air. 

It is only the Church, like the heart which you do not see, that 
has life in it. The true Church is as invisible as the true God. 
The Church that is alive can be inspired. An institution can not 
be inspired. A wooden church is on a par with a wooden god, and 
reverence for either is idolatry. 

What said that great abolisher of dead churches and of shams 
in general ? — " IVIan can not live by bread alone." Bread is perish- 
able — it can only sustain a perishable body ; but man has an im- 
perishable life v/ithin him, and must have free access to *' every 
word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" to sustain that life. 
And this " every word" (not merely the words spoken to Peter or 
to Paul; that is not enough : nor are they the " every word" that 
God has to say, by any means), this " word of God," is received 
now, as of old, through a living inspiration ; and this inspiration, 
therefore, is the " rock" on which the Church rests. 'J'he true 
Church, then, is in man, but not of hitn ; and the worship thereof 
is a life of uses. Its prayers are deeds, and its offering is the as- 
cending incense of its ripened virtues. 

In the quaint old times they distributed what they called, 
" Crumbs of Comfort for the Chickens of the Gospel ;" as a com- 
plement to which " crumbs," we must add in these days a curry- 
comb, to scratch the shells off their backs. The '• crumbs," too, 
have become somewhat stale, and have been chewed for them so 
long, that the children have well-nigh lost the use of their own 
gums. The " milk of the word''' has been so diluted with the wat^r 
of creed, that it has soured on their stomachs, and turned to gas, 
with a disagreeable result. 

To feed these children, to take the rod out of their hands and 
apply it to their backs if need be, is the thing to be done. While 
the reason is in abeyance, authority must fdl its place. 

A modern artist has beautifully illustrated this on canvas. In 
Coles' " Voyage of Life," the first of the series represents an in- 
fant in a boat, with his guardian angel at the helm. The authori- 



THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 21 

ty — the guiding power is vested in him. You are convinced on 
the first reflection, that to have placed it in the hands of the child, 
would have been an artistic blunder. That pulpy mass of feeble 
humanity — vi'hat power of guidance has it 1 The artist had to 
place an angel there, because he saw that Nature had done so. 
Blessed inspiration ! how it immortalizes even the names of men ! 
In the next picture, reason has commenced her reign ; the youth 
has his own hand upon the guiding power. The angel stands upon 
the shore and waves him on — not with a rod, but with a blessing. 
The young immortal is free from authority forever. 

Not so, while yet a child. At this point, good men often stum- 
ble. The Church having divided the world into " saints" and 
" sinners," with the scientific precision with which politicians di- 
vide the nation into " hard-shells" and " soft-shells,"" the stupid 
blunder sticks to them like a curse ; and in the darkness which it 
engenders, they call folly " sin," and ignorance " crime." They 
take all bipeds above four feet high to be men, and to know better, 
because they do, and to be amenable to reason or moral suasion, 
because they are. 

But Nature does not belong to the Church, and therefore does 
not recognize her profound distinction of parties. She has boys 
and girls, and men and women — man, in all stages of growth, but 
never a saint nor a sinner. 

Jesus looked down from his cross upon children — not upon sin- 
ners, as we have been so long taught to believe — upon children, 
who " know not what they do ;" and seeing their utter helplessness 
and want of ability to comprehend the simplest spiritual truth or 
fact, he paused in the midst of his dying agony to ask his Father's 
blessing for them ! 

Could the Church but exchange its stupid idolatry for that man, 
for a grain of wisdom with which to comprehend him, she might, 
with enlarged propriety, call him " Saviour !" 

There was nothing left for those children but the authority of 
the Roman whip, by which all rule was scourged out of the.ii. 
We may have to do the same thing with ours. 

Now, that childhood stands at the helm of our " voyage of life" 
political, instead of an angel, take this extract from a political paper 
of the dominant party as one more proof. I quote from the Richmond 
Enquirer of June 9 th : 

It is idle to talk of ueiod, or peace, or truce with Sumner or Sumner's friends. 



22 THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 

Catiline was purity itself compared -with the Massachusetts senator, and hia 
friends are no better than he. They are all (we mean the leading and con- 
spicuous ones) avowed and active traitors. The sending the Congressional 
Committee to Kanzas was done with the treasonable purpose of aiding the re- 
bellion in that Territory. The black republicans in Congress are at open war 
with government, and, like their allies, the Garrisonian abolitionists, equally 
at war with religion, female virtue, private property, and distinctions of race. 
They all deserve the halter, and it is vain and idle to indulge the expectation 
that there can be union or peace with such men. Sumner and Sumner's 
friends must be punished and silenced. Government, which can not suppress 
such crimes as theirs, has failed of its purpose. Either such wretches must be 
hung or put in the penitentiary, or the South should at once prepare to quit 
the Union. We would not jeopard the religion and morality of the South to 
save a Union that had failed for every useful purpose. Let us tell the North 
at once, if you can not suppress the treasonable action, and silence the foul, 
licentious, and iniidel propagandism of such men as Stephen Pearl Andrews, 
Wendell Phillips, Beecher, Garrison, Sumner, and their negro and female as- 
sociates, let us part in peace. We would like to see modesty, female virtue, 
common morality, and religion independent of government. The experiment; 
at the South, to leave these matters to the regulation of public opinion, works 
admirably. We are the most moral, religious, contented, and law-abiding- 
people on earth, and are daily becomiag more so. 

Here we have childhood troubled with flatulency. Their petu- 
lance is as sincere as any condemnation of it can be. We have 
sent them many costly toys at great sacrifice of our own self-respect 
to keep them quiet ; but when was childhood ever satisfied ? We 
have sent them little wooden imitations of senators, and cabinet 
ministers, and members of Congress, and gingerbread presidents, 
from which they invariably lick the molasses, and then throw away, 
or soil so badly, that no one but a knoio-nothing will touch them ; 
and now they are not going to play with the other children any 
more, not even with their poor relations the " Doughfaces," unless 
they will behave better, but are determined to stay at home in 
future, and nurse their " chastity" and '• religion." They might do 
a worse thing. 

Denunciation, moral lectures, or argument is of no avail what- 
ever with these little gentlemen ; they are beyond the reach of all 
but the rod, and that at present they have in their own hands. It 
must be taken from them, or the day we celebrate is disgraced for- 
ever ! 

The type of the revolution of " '76" was resistance to a three- 
penny tax on a pound of tea ; that of the present is resistance to a 
whip in the hands of a child ! It must be taken from him at 



THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 23 

wliatever cost. Talk it out, pray it out, vote it out, or knock it 
out ; only remember this, out it must come, by the one method or 
the other, or by all combined, for there can be no peace and no pro- 
gress until i*' is done. 

These babies belong in the ABC class, not to the governing 
class — to the halls of elementary instruction, and not to those of 
legislation. They are proficients at making mischief, not in making 
laws. Their rule is an insult to nature — an insult to the memory 
of those brave men who gave their blood for freedom, not for 
slavery — an insult to all manhood, of whatever time. 

Nature has signed the death-warrant of all such rule, and man 
must execute it without delay, or the office of high-sheriff will be 
taken from him. In the court of Nature, God delivers the opinions ; 
hence, whatever is right by Nature can not be wrong by theology. 
She is older than any church, and more perfect than any creed. 
To co-operate with her is to be " one with God." It is to inaugu- 
rate the supremacy of manhood — it is to transform religion into 
Christianity, and democracy into liberty. Paper constitutions, which 
mean nothing, and a paper gospel, which indorses every thing, will 
be " rolled together as a scroll" in the " fervent heat" of this revo- 
lutionary fire, and in their places will be " a new heaven and a new 
earth," with children in it Avho can grow — with a church in it that 
can be inspired — with a state in it which will be free ! 

The new day has already dawned. Though the Church be with- 
out inspiration, the world was never so full of it. The rays of the 
spiritual sun are rapidly commingling with those of the physical, 
the one to illuminate and warm the soul, the other to develop the 
body. As the darkness rolls away, and the eye of prophecy grows 
clearer, in the place of these wooden creeds, iron despotisms, and 
India-rubber gospels, may be seen a land with liberty in every ham- 
let, and its love in every heart — a theology which gets its facts from 
Nature and its truth from God — a church whose Avails are the living 
crystals of a divine humanity, and whose worship is the intelligent 
silence of inexpressible joy. Even now, 

" Lo ! the clouds roll away ! they break, they fly ! 
And, like the glorious light of summer, cast 
O'er the wide landscape, from the embracing sky, 
On all the peaceful world the smile of Heaven shall lie." 



24 THE CinLD AND THE MAN. 

Dr. Gould said he would present something on the subjedt of 
slavery, which purported to come from the spirit-world. In doing 
so, he referred to the aggressions of the slave power. We have 
had an oligarchy in this country, which has ruled us for over forty 
years ; and the principle which that oligarchy has adopted, has 
been to steal whenever they got a chance. They have, ever since 
the establishment of this government, been robbing men and wo- 
men, as good as ourselves, of the sacred rights which God has be- 
stowed upon all ; and not only so, but they have been robbing the 
poor Indians of our country. Dr. G. closed his remarks by read- 
ing some lines, purporting to have been dictated by spirits, upon 
the aggressions of slavery. 

s. B. brittan's speech. 

S. B. Brittan, Editor of the Spiritual Telegraph, was repeatedly called 
for by the audience ; he had been confined for a week in consequence of severe 
indisposition, and manifested considerable reluctance in taking the stand. 
Mr. Brittan spoke as follows : 

While Dr. Hallock was delivering his very interesting discourse, 
I was forcibly reminded that the popular idea of Liberty is extremely 
superficial. It is supposed that we are free as individuals and as 
a people, because we are permitted to do certain things which 
many people in other parts of the world are not permitted to do. 
But true liberty is something more than this, and consists in the 
liberation and normal exercise of all the faculties which constitute 
a perfect Manhood. The mere right to vote once or twice a year, 
or to worship in our own way, when, as has been illustrated, we 
have no rational conception of the nature of true worship, does not 
by any means constitute true human freedom. It appears to me 
that the freedom commonly possessed and enjoyed throughout the 
world, is the freedom of the passions, and that surely is not human 
freedom in any enlightened or proper sense of the words. The 
freedom of the passions, when not modified and restrained by the 
proper exercise of the rational faculties, leads to general disorder, and 
sometimes to universal anarchy. We have had numerous illustra- 
tions of this doubtful and dangerous freedom in all ages. In fact, 
the freedom most esteemed and most prevalent among men has 
been little more than this. We have not had intellectual freedom 
in any enlarged and comprehensive sense. To be truly free, we 
must he free in mind and in spirit. It is in vain to talk of freedom 
for Man so long as the noblest faculties of his mental and moral con- 



THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 25 

stitution are" sleeping in chains of darkness, and totally incapable of 
their natural exercise. 

Freedom, in a sense which is truly honorable to man, is a rare 
and glorious inheritance. But no faculty is free unless it have per- 
mission to act. When, therefore, a man is in a state where all the 
highest faculties of his mind are chained in ignorance, he can not 
be said to be free. He is not a free man who has only liberty to 
exercise a single faculty of his nature ; he is not a free man who 
has one faculty that he can not use. In order to make h.\m free, 
you must unshackle all the powers of his manhood, and make him 
stand erect in the full possession and legitimate exercise of every 
faculty of his being. And where do we find such an illustration of 
freedom ? There may be here and there individual examples of 
men who have a large measure of freedom, in a rational and human 
sense, but no nation presents such an example. We have yet to 
see A FREE PEOPLE. To be FREE, a man must be a slave to no master 
appetite, to no despotic propensity. He must be above all his 
appetites, and Reason must subordinate the passions. What is true 
of the individual is likewise true of nations, and I repeat, we have 
no example of a nation of freemen in any high intellectual, moral, 
or religious sense. 

We come still further short of any thing like Spiritual Freedom. 
It is time for us to realize that there is no human slavery but that 
which belongs to the soul ; there is, indeed, no other. Make a 
man free spiritually, and you can not long enslave him physically. 
In order to have a just and full conception of freedom, we must 
understand what is implied by spiritual freedom. When a man is 
spiritually free, he realizes how utterly powerless are all the chains, 
and bolts, and dungeon walls which despots have forged and reared 
from first to last. There is no bondage for such a man. To him 
the prison walls are nothing. What are the chains that only re- 
strain the limbs when once a man is convinced that his true man- 
hood is spiritual ? The body is but the form in which himself re- 
sides ; and I venture to say that there is no bondage for the man 
who is once made to realize that he is a spirit. 

Suppose you attempt to shackle the mind of a man who is 
in reality intellectually free. If you please, pass resolutions that 
he shall only be allowed to exercise his faculties in a particular 
direction, and subject to certain restraints ; all this would not ar- 
rest the man who can traverse the distant spheres ; who will 



26 THE CHILD AXD THE MAN. 

look out into the vast empire where God resides ; and who 
will follow the foot-prints of Angels, whithersoever they lead the 
way. He is a free man without regard to constitutions. His life 
is a declaration of independence, and he will be free in spite of all 
the edicts and engines of oppression. He departs and returns at 
pleasure. He is here — there — yonder — he is among the stars! 
What is true of him as a spirit is true of. him also as a man, for pre- 
cisely in this does his essential manhood consist. Thus as we come 
to entertain the highest or spiritual idea of freedom, we triumph 
over all exterior bondage, and trample chains and thrones, and all 
the implements and insignia of external despotism beneath our 
feet. I think a man may be in this condition. I feel that he 
may be measurably indifferent to the shackles which have no 
power to bind the spirit. In this condition he is best prepared 
to rise above all outward wrongs, and to assert and maintain his 
civil and political freedom. 

At the present time we need a higher conception of individual 
rights and responsibilities. Without this we are liable to lose 
what little freedom is embodied in the government under which we 
live. There can be no safety for our republican institutions when 
the popular idea of Liberty is confounded with lawless strife and 
unprincipled usurpation. Our strength does not consist in the 
mere exercise of external powers and the development of our phys- 
ical resources. It is not in the army and navy. It is a false idea 
of the nature and sources of the national strength which conceives 
it to consist in these things. We imagine that if we have plenty 
of implements, strong fortifications, and a full treasury, we have all 
the means and instrumentalities of power — we are, therefore, strong. 
This is a mistake. Our strength is not in these ; and the whole 
history of the world proves that the strength of nations does not 
consist in such things. The Ancient Republics were strongest in 
their infancy. When their material resources were more fully de- 
veloped, and the power of moral cohesion ceased to be commen- 
surate with their physical growth and outward splendor, they be- 
came feeble, and at last they fell. We should learn from the 
history and experience of other nations and other times what maj 
be the possible result of our own experiment. Be assured we are 
only free when we are enlightened, and we are strong only when 
we live truly. It will be found at last with nations, as well as with 
individuals, that in the degree that Ave live righteously we live 



THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 27 

safely ; that for the nation, as truly as for the man, honesty is the 
best policy ; indeed, that it is the only policy that will preserve our 
institutions from certain destruction. 

We have come to this, that the men whose business it is to admin- 
ister the government employ their time in efforts to overthrow our re- 
publican institutions, and in sapping the foundations of public morality. 
The boasted liberty which the people celebrate to-day is worth com- 
paratively little, if I rightly estimate it. It is difficult now to get an 
unbiased opinion of the American people on any great national ques- 
tion. Politicians sell themselves and offer their principles to the 
highest bidder in every street ; their services can be had on any oc- 
casion and for any cause. If any one has as many as " thirty pieces 
of silver" to bestow, there is also some political Judas ready to receive 
them. What degree of respect can the people really have for the 
claims of truth and morality when these things are permitted to exist 
and to go unwhipped of justice 1 Who shall arouse us from this leth- 
argy to a lively sense of the danger to which we are exposed 1 What 
power shall break the fearful spell and make us understand that a 
knowledge of the truth and the practice of the virtues alone insure 
freedom ? When shall we realize that without these all that bears the 
name of republican liberty will be to us, and to the world, unsub- 
stantial and ephemeral as the creations of a distempered dream ? 
The Ancient Republics furnished young Liberty with a sepulcher 
where it only sought a place to be born. If liberty is to perish 
here, our fall will be the more terrible to contemplate, and the 
more disastrous to human interests, in that we shall fall from the 
pinnacle of temporal prosperity, in which we have transcended all 
the nations of the earth. 

There is no security for any nation or people unless its internal 
cohesive power is commensurate with the aggregation of outward 
elements. We go on adding state after state to our Republic, but 
it is generally conceded that the Union is growing weaker every 
day. The power that holds these States together at this moment 
is far less secure than it was twenty-five years ago. What will 
be the result if this state of things continues does not require the 
gift of prophecy to determine. If we add to our domain state after 
state, and do not, at the same time, increase the internal moral 
power which holds the elements together, what, I repeat, will be 
the result ? Simply this, the elements which compose this vast body 
will fall asunder from their own weight. In this respect they will 



28 THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 

but follow the irresistible law of Nature. Oh ! if the fathers of the 
Republic be permitted to look down on us, and to witness the 
apathy that everywhere prevails in relation to the state of affairs, 
how must they be shocked at the coldness and indifference of the 
people to questions of the most vital and lasting concern, and 
which involve in their solution the destiny of a great Empire ! 

At this point Mr. Brittan's speech was suddenly interrupted, doubtless by the 
weakness consequent on his late indisposition. He had commenced an apos- 
trophe to the spirit of Washington, but had given utterance to a few words 
only, when it was observed that an unusual pallor overspread his features, 
his voice faltered, and he fell backward into the arms of a friend, who had 
noticed his illness and rose to prevent his fall. Sir. B. soon recovered, and 
was able to leave the hall unassisted. Reporter. 

w. H. Burleigh's speech. 
Ml*. Burleigh being called for, came forward, and said : 
I have listened with intense interest — an interest which I sel- 
dom feel in listening to public discourses — to the oration of Dr. 
Hallock this morning. I knew our speaker to be a man of ability. 
I knew that he was a free soul ; but the production which he has 
given us to-day was altogether beyond my estimate of his powers, 
and I feel like giving an emphatic response to the sentiment, that 
it is the best Fourth-of-July oration ever delivered — without hum- 
bug or gas, but imbued, from beginning to end, with a spirit of true 
and comprehensive freedom. 

As a basis for my few remarks, let me take as a text the last 
word of my last sentence — Freedom. We, as a people, are given 
to a mere formal utterance of liberty. We are full of the word, 
full of the sound, with far too little of the spirit. Freedom, rightly 
imderstood, is simply obedience to law. No one present will think 
that by the term law I mean the enactments which may be spread 
out upon parchments by regularly constituted legislators, by politi- 
cal conclaves, or by a mob of border rufhans. There must be 
something more than a simple enactment by a conclave of men 
legally, or illegally, brought together, to constitute law in the true 
signification of the term. Law always involves the sentiment of 
exact justice, and just so far as it fails in this, it fails to be law. 
If men come together and pass enactments that I shall worship God 
according to certain forms which, to them, may be significant, but 
which to me are perfectly spiritless, their enactments fail in all the 
essential attributes of law, so far as I am concerned. The idea 



THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 29 

our fathers had of law — and they were men far in advance of their 
age, perhaps I might say of the present age — was, that it should 
not interfere with man's religious expressions and manifestations ; that 
it should not go between man and his God ; and any enactment of 
man which attempts to do this is tyrannical, and, as such, is to be 
either forcibly, or, as the case may be, quietly resisted. No free 
spirit, at all events, will submit to such interference between him- 
self and his Maker. Freedom is obedience to law. The man 
who is bound by the fetters of disease is not a free man. It is 
probable, nay certain, that his freedom has been forfeited by some 
violation of physical law. This violation may have been committed 
ignorantly or recklessly, but, in either case, the penalty of that 
violation must be visited upon him. Spiritual freedom consists in 
obedience to the laws of our spiritual being, and whatever tends to 
cramp our spiritual volition must interfete with our spiritual freedom, 
and consequently tend to spiritual despotism, and the enslavement of 
the whole man. In. reference to political freedom, the same defi- 
nition will prevail. It is conditioned upon obedience to law — the 
law of right. Your liberty — mine— that of all men — depends on 
obedience to this law. I apprehend that the whole history of the 
world will demonstrate this truism. The moment men or peoples 
admit that one man may be enslaved, that moment they jeopardize 
their own liberty. If we fail as a people in maintaining the liberty 
which we possess, and in transmitting it to nations yet unborn, it 
will be because in the very beginning of our existence as a nation 
we compromised with slavery. Why, it would be just as rational 
for Christ to compromise with Belial as for liberty-loving people, 
whose lives have been consecrated to this great idea of freedom, 
to compromise with slavery. 

We are told that our fathers did the best thing they could under 
the circumstances. I am not here to judge whether our fathers 
did the best thing they could for themselves, or whether their man- 
hood was equal to the position in which they were placed, or not; 
but I unhesitatingly say they did the very worst thing they could 
for their country, and for future generations, when they consented 
that the pure white robes of liberty, which had been cleansed in 
the blood of the martyrs of freedom, should be dragged in the im- 
pure mire of slavery. It was a fearful, if not a fatal mistake, which 
they made, and from that one mistake has originated all the strifes, 
all the commotions, and all the perils which beset our freedom at 



30 THE CHILD .-^nD THE MAN. 

(he present day. What fellowship has light with darkness ? What 
concord has Christ with Belial ? What harmony can exist between 
freedom and slavery ? Between the two, God himself has planted 
an everlasting antagonism, and if a wo is pronounced against him 
who shall sever what God has joined together, no less a wo is 
uttered against him who seeks to join together what God has ever- 
lastingly separated. 

We are not only false to ourselves as a people when we seek to 
compromise with slavery, but we are false to the great interests 
which, in the providence of God, were committed to our hands — 
the interests of freedom. There was a time when the American 
people occupied an eminently proud and glorious position. It was 
in that hour when, breaking with one strong hand tlie fetters that 
bound them, and with the other casting the gauntlet at the feet of the 
Ocean Queen, they stood up in the dignity of manhood, asserting 
its rights as the vindicators of the freedom of the world. Then, 
inscribing upon their banner as it flung out its folds upon the moun- 
tain-top — Freedom for all — The rights of all men before God — 
Freedom and equality, they vindicated on the battle-fields of the 
Revolution, that great comprehensive principle, not for themselves 
alone — for that would have been pure selfishness — but for the 
world : " We hold this truth to be self-evident that man's right to 
liberty is inalienable" — mans right, not our right, not the right of 
the white man, not the right of the Caucasian, not the right of the 
African, not the right of the Mongolian, but man's right to liberty 
is inalienable. Their platform of freedom was as broad as our 
humanity, and that utterance went riding on the wind, as thunder 
goes, with power in it to crumble the despotisms of the earth, and 
to make pallor gather upon the cheek of the despot, as it did on 
the cheek of Belshazzar, when he saw the handwriting of his 
doom blazing upon his palace wall. Had our fathers been true to 
this great truth — had our practice harmonized with our precept in 
this respect, we should have been invincible in the cause of free- 
dom throughout the world, and to-day there would have been no 
despot upon his throne lording it over humanity, to-day there would 
have been no slave, no serf, and no man crouching at the footstool 
of power begging for bread. By this time all wrong and outrage 
■would have been swept away, and man would have been as free 
as God's air which he breathes — as free as the waves which roll 
in obedience to law — free in the truest and most comprehensive 



THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 31 

■sense of the ierm ; and despotism would have been utterly abol- 
ished on the face of the earth. 

There was a time when despots felt that their doom was close 
at hand. Seeing how successfully we had come out of our strug- 
gle, looking at the progress of liberal ideas throughout the world, 
they, too, felt that they had been weighed in the balance and found 
wanting ; but when they saw that our practice belied our precept, 
that instead of employing the rest which the cessation of the strife 
with the mother country had given us for the purpose of carrying 
out the great idea that sanctified that strife, w^e were compromising 
with slavery, extending its limits and strengthening its stakes, their 
cry was changed. Instead of the pallor that blanched their cheek, 
came the flush of demoniac exultation, as they exclaimed " Ha ! 
ha ! hast thou become like unto us ! How art thou fallen from 
heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning !" 

Under the influence of this false example of ours — this example 
which has been infidel to the great idea of liberty — the work of 
despotism has gone on, crushing humanity beneath its iron heel, 
restricting the rights of the poor, grinding their faces, and crowd- 
ing them into the mire of subjection and despotism. We have been 
false to ourselves. We have been false to the great idea which 
redeemed the Revolution from the stigma of rebellion — which sanc- 
tified its battle-fields, and made the forays of its heroes something 
more than the incursions of pirates and murderers. We have been 
false to the principles of freedom throughout the world ; and now 
if we would celebrate this day aright, around which cluster many hal- 
lowed recollections, and which no one can contemplate without 
feelings of melancholy interest, let us begin the work where our 
fathers abandoned it — let us carry out the great principles to which 
they consecrated their lives. Let us plant ourselves on the broad 
platform of freedom for all. In addition to the sentiment of the 
poet — that " the day that sees man a slave takes half his worth 
away" — let us add that the day that sees our consent to the en- 
slavement of man, sees us jeopardize our individual liberty. 

Is it not true that there is less freedom for us as individuals — for 
vou and me — for our representatives in Congress — for our senators 
— our Sumners and Wilsons, and Sewards, and for that noble band 
in the Lower House, who stand up manfully for the cause of free- 
dom — is there not less freedom for us all than there would be if 
slavery did not exist in our land ? And in view of the fact that 



82 THE CinLD AND THE MAN. 

three millions in this country are ground under the heel of absolute 
despotism, and that we are ruled by an oligarchy consisting of less 
than half a million, is there not something like mockery in the idea 
of celebrating our independence — celebrating a thing which is not ? 
And yet I am in favor of the due observance of this day, because I 
honor not merely the achievements which it commemorates, but 
the principles which led to them. I would honor our fathers just 
as much as if they had failed. If they had been denounced as 
rebels and received the doom of rebels, I would honor them as 
truly as I honor them now ; because it is not the courage which 
led them to peril their lives upon the battle-field, which I honor — 
their opponents exhibited courage as rare, perhaps, as theirs, so 
far as its outward manifestations are concerned — but it is for 
their inward principle, their self-consecration to right, their 
divine love of liberty, the toils they cheerfully entered upon, 
the sufTerings they cheerfully endured, and the privations they bore 
for the sake of liberty — for these rare virtues let them be held in ever- 
lasting remembrance. And let us remember for ourselves that we 
honor these virtues best when we reproduce them in our own lives. 

Only he who is in favor of universal liberty has any right to cel- 
ebrate the Fourth of July ; while those who are seeking to estab- 
lish and extend slavery with its blight and mildew, in the land, are 
hypocrites in the most significant sense of the term ; for they pre- 
tend to celebrate the Fourth of July, while multitudes of them have 
declared the Declaration of Independence to be a mere rhetorical 
flourish, and trampled it under their feet. Only he who in the love 
of freedom would extend the boon to all — only he who would make 
the principle of human liberty as wide as our wide humanity — only 
he who would execrate human slavery, and consecrate the powers 
which God has given him for its utter extinction, wherever it exists 
— has any right to honor the memory of those fathers who periled 
life and all that makes life valuable, in defense of this great prin- 
ciple — the inalienable right of humanity to liberty — the universality 
as well as the inalienability of human liberty. 

Dr. Gray said : I do not fully sympathize with the last speaker, 
or with many other earnest advocates of freedom, when they re- 
gret that liberty was not born whole and entire in 1776. Dr. 
Hallock expressed a sound maxim of history when he said that 
the church in the human soul holds the relation to the state that 
the heart does to the lungs, and thence to the whole human sys- 



THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 33 

tem. If you make the state entirely free before you reform the 
Church, you will produce a system of priestly tyranny in place of 
common law rights. I would prefer to have even feudal tyranny 
— I would prefer to have the rule of the iron scepter of despotic 
lands — rather than freedom as to the state, with a triumphant des- 
potism as to the church. First let the church be reformed, and 
the state will take care of itself ; and, it is my opinion, that Spirit- 
ualism is effecting this as fast as it is possible for it safely to be done. 
I am so much of a conservative as to believe that political liberty is 
generally born as fast as it is possible for the race to use it aright. 
Mr. PooLK said, that our pride is touched by the fact that we 
have slavery m our country, yet he did not think it was always 
touched in the right place. He believed that there is slavery in 
the North as well as in the South. The laboring men of this city, 
who are compelled to work from twelve to eighteen hours per day, 
can do little more than gain a subsistence, and find no time for 
reading or intellectual culture. They are as much in slavery as 
the negroes of South Carolina or Georgia. The poor stage-driver, 
who is compelled to sit upon his box all the day and half the night, 
uttering not a word, and doing only what he is told to do, is not a 
freeman. lie has no opportunities for the cultivation of his intel- 
lectual faculties, and is as much a slave as the negro of the South. 
P. E. Farnsworth spoke as follows : What I have to say 
on this occasion will relate more particularly to the church than 
to the state. In my estimation, the greatest danger to both lies, 
not in aggressions from without, but in the decay of the vital prin- 
ciple vvfithin. In the same ratio tiiat the state extends her borders 
and becomes avaricious of territory, and the machinery of govern- 
ment becomes complicated, is the danger increased, that venality 
will creep in, and the spirit of liberty die out in the hearts of the 
citizens. In proportion, also, as the Church acquires the elements 
of external wealth and grandeur, and becomes ambitious of making 
a display in her architecture or ceremonials, is the danger in- 
creased that the true genius of Christianity will depart from her, 
and the fire of love and devotion die out upon her altars. 

Dr. Hallock's characteristic hits at an external church, formal 
worship, and a punctilious, yet imbecile priesthood, awakened m 
my mind some echoes from the realm of poesy — thoughts that have 
been with me before, but what the occasion was that first suggested 
them, or whence they came, 1 can not now tell. While the last 

3 



S4 THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 

gentleman was speaking, I made an effort to recall them so that I 
might repeat them to you and preserve the rythmic form in which 
they originally came. The result of the effort you shall now 
have : 

Is that the House of God, where human art 

Displays itself in pictures on the walls .' 
Whose chancel, dome, and altar — every part. 

For human praise and admiration calls ? 
Dwells God in temples such as that below. 
And is it there he doth his glory show ? 

That fane was reared by human toil and skill ; 

Its decorations speak of human pride, 
That seeks with outward show the mind to fill, 

And thus its own deformity to hide. 
On that gilt altar, beautiful, but cold. 
No other sacrifice appears but gold. 

Is that God's minister to mortals sent, 

Who comes to them with studied words, to tell 

That they are doomed to endless punishment, 
The tortures, and the agonies of hell ? 

Is such the gospel Jesus came to bring. 

That man is born to endless suffering ? 

How little of the simple, native grace. 
In which God's " Revelations" all abound. 

Appears within that consecrated place, 
Or in the studied manuscript is found ! 

The burdened soul that seeks relief in prayer, 

Repeats in vain the forms of worship there. 

You ask of Pope and pampered priest in vain, 
Who rule the Church with more than regal sway, 

To prophesy upon the millions slain, 

Or clear the skeptic's honest doubts away. 

Blind guides, that lead the blind, must with them fall, 

And one dark ditch at last receive them all ! 

But listen to the notes of sacred (?) song, 
That from behind a crimson curtain rise ! 

Now peals the solemn organ loud and long. 
And now the voice in plaintive cadence dies. 

The measured tones which through that temple ring. 

Proclaim the praise of those that play and sing ! 



THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 86 

Behold, upon that turret, lifted high, 

The cross of Jesus, glittering in the sun, 
To tell the world that once there came to die 

For mtin, a poor, despised, and lowly one ! 
Contract his life of poverty and woe, 
With all the pomp that fills the house below ! 

'Tis not by building fanes that reach to heaven, 

That man is saved, and God is glorified ; 
Nor can the sins of any be forgiven, 

'Till they have overcome their selfish pride, — 
For what but pride would rear the cross in air, 
Which. on their shoulders men disdain to bear ? 

" God dwelleth not in temples made with hands," 
Nor takes delight in studied forms of prayer, 

But where the human heart with love expands. 
His spirit finds a ready temple there, 

And men should praise and worship God above, 

By lives on earth of holiness and love ! 

Ira B. Davis said : It seems to me we need not travel so far to 
point out slavery or criminals. We have been told of the border 
ruffians and the crimes committed in the Senate chamber. I would 
ask, friends, what right they have to expect any thing different in the 
senate chamber or in Kanzas, while in this very city the same rule 
is adopted, and the same kind of ruffians violate the ballot-box, and 
beat away from the polls the people who should make the Presi- 
dents and the Senate. A set of hireling bullies govern the state, 
and have for many years ; and are honest, well-meaning men, who 
are not disposed to battle physically, permitted to take part in 
our primary elections ? No ! nor have they for an age past in this 
very city. Why, then, talk so much about border ruffians, while 
no voice is raised and no steps are taken to remedy the evil here ? 
It has always been a fault on the part of men of warm sympathies 
that they never have power to act. They are ready to mount the 
rostrum and talk of freedom ; but call upon them to put their shoul- 
der to the wheel practically, and there is no life in them. 

The Sumner outrage is nothing more than a repetition of the 
crimes perpetrated all over the North at the primary, which are the 
most important, elections ; and Brooks is nothing more than a speci- 
men of the men that send your Sumners to Congress. The people 
have neglected their political rights, and then have complained of 



36 THE CHILD AND THE MAN. 

the evils that are visited upon them. If you wouki have honest 
men to represent you in Congre.ss, or in the halls of legislation, you 
must club together, as the rogues and ruffians who control your 
primary elections, and prevent you from exercising your political 
rights, now do, and select proper men, and present them before the 
people for their support. If you neglect to do this, rogues will 
continue to club together, and act in harmony, and carry off the 
prize ; and so long as this state of things continues, will the coun- 
try be represented by knaves. I have been associated with pohti- 
cians ever since I was old enough to participate in elections, and J 
have seen men beaten away from the polls, and I have been knocked 
down myself, when striving to exercise my rights as a citizen at 
the ballot-box. Now, if we really wish to be practical, let us go 
to work at home, and devise some remedy by which we can send 
the right kind of men to our legislative halls. 

I do not believe that men by nature are knaves or deopots- I 
think it is only through ignorance that they oppres.?. their fel'ow- 
raen ; and if one glorious example could be set — if or.e ccmmunity 
could be governed upon principles of equality — the world would be 
conquered — the great problem would be solved. I sympathize with 
every species of reform, bat I do v.i^h to see something done at 
home, for the working masses are slaves at the North. The ele- 
ments of God are monopolized, the earth is in the hands of the few, 
and the working-class is reduced to slavery — compelled to work 
when the monopolist permits, and live as the monopolist dictates. 
The earth, and the air above it, are held by the few, and there can 
be no freedom, North or South, until each shall be protected in the 
use of as much of the elements as is necessary for his existence 
and development. When that is done, all slavery will vanish. 

A. C. Hills said : There is a species of sophistry extant which 
is throv/n in the way of every great effort to rescue our government 
from the overshadowing despotism which is crushing out her vital- 
ity, which deserves consideration. 

At the present timo, we have in our country a base conspiracy 
against human liberty. We are compelled to contemplate a spec- 
tacle no less revolting than that of an armed band of marauders 
attempting, by mob violence, to thrust slavery upon the free soil of 
Kanzas. We ha.ve seen the socrcd right of free sj)cech stricken 
down in the person of one of cur noblest and most accomplished 
Senators, We have beheld the classic Sumner lie bleeding in the 



THE CHILD AND THE MAN, 37 

Senate chamber beneath the bludgeon of a cowardly assassin. And 
all this is in accordance with a deep, concerted conspiracy to crush 
into submission those who dare to love liberty. And yet, if we 
point out to the people a practical remedy for these gigantic wrongs, 
we are met with the objection, forsooth, that there is slavery in the 
North — that labor is not requited as it should be here — that the 
rights of men are stricken down in the streets of New York ; and 
therefore we should do nothing to stop the aggressions of a national 
power, which threatens the very existence of the Republic ! The 
argument, divested of all unmeaning Avords, is simply this : Labor 
in New York does not recei\''e the respect and the reward to which 
it is entitled, and therefore we have no right to resist the encroach- 
ments of slavery and vindicate free speech. For the life of me I 
can see no sense or philosophy ia the position. Whatever may be 
true of the condition of the free laborers of this city, does not in- 
validate the fact, that a gigantic system of outrage and robbery is 
carried on by the chosen rulers of this government, and can in no 
possible manner atone for our participation in these crimes, or our 
neglect to establish Liberty ss a national principle. 

The more rational idea seems to be, that in the exercise of our 
duties as citizens of a republic, we are to resist the encroachments 
of national despotism, even though in our own midst there may be 
wrongs which need correction. It is our duty, wherever our rights 
as a people are violated or stricken down, to resist the usurpation. 



I 
/ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRF<;c: 

iliiflf 

011 801 S 9'"' • 



